Deadhouse Landing

Prologue

Dariyal, capital city of the Napan Isles, burned in the night. From the heights of the harbour fortifications Cartheron Crust watched the flames swirl and dance and leap through the smoke. He followed that black plume as it billowed higher to obscure the bright silver eye of the waxing moon, and whispered to himself, ‘So it all ends.’ In fire, destruction and betrayal. Even the best laid plans.

He leaned forward to peer over the guano-stained edge of the battlements to the streets below, where bands of militia and partisans loyal to either side of this transfer of power hunted one another in the clash of running city-wide battle.

‘Captain!’ a voice called, and Cartheron glanced to his cordon of guards; a messenger had arrived. He waved forward the sweaty, soot-smeared woman.

She saluted. ‘Sir! We’ve lost control of the north quarter.’ Involuntarily, he glanced towards the arc of the harbour, and cursed inwardly. ‘Sir … the mole…’

He nodded. ‘Yes. I understand. Who are you with?’

‘Captain Hawl, sir.’

‘Very good.’ He took a slow breath, tasted the smoke on his tongue, and, grimacing, thought, It is now irrevocable. ‘My compliments to Captain Hawl. Have her withdraw. We will regroup at the agreed location.’

The young Napan’s indigo features darkened even further as her lips clenched in disappointment. She saluted. ‘I’m … sorry, sir.’

He waved her off. ‘Go quickly.’

She ran. Cartheron turned to the stairs behind him that led to the top of a curtain tower. He drew off his helmet and dragged a hand through his tangled sweaty hair. He let out a long low breath; now for the hard part. He started up the stairs.

When he reached the topmost landing he found her looking out across the city, her back to him, slim, ramrod straight, hands clasped behind her back, in a plain long cotton shirt and trousers. He cleared his throat into a fist and inclined his head. ‘Princess Sureth…’

She turned and Crust found himself confronted once again by the hard wall of that flat gaze. Even now, he thought, with everything on the line, so damned … distant.

‘Yes, captain?’

‘We’ve lost control of the north quarter. Your brother no doubt intends to close the harbour at the mole. M’lady, we must withdraw or risk capture.’

Her dark gaze slid aside to the north and it occurred to him that no longer was he looking down at the tousled, mousy hair that she always kept so short; the princess was now nearly as tall as he. Has the ruling Garell House strength, she has. And trains harder than any of us.

If only her brother hadn’t been so damned greedy …

She gave one slight nod. Her stony gaze returned to him. ‘I see. And what of our vaunted circle of Napan councillors?’

Cartheron could not hold her eyes. He glanced aside. ‘I’m sorry, m’lady. Tarel offered more.’

She set her hands over the stone parapet before her – hands he knew to be as hard as the stone itself. ‘Councillor Amaron must have offered just as much on my behalf.’

Cartheron pulled his fingers through his beard. Gods! How to say this? ‘Your demeanour. Your … ah, frankness … m’lady, has won you no friends on the council.’

She blew a harsh breath out her nose. ‘I see. They prefer Tarel’s shallow glad-handing and easy demeanour to my … what? Cartheron?’

He cleared his throat. Gods give him strength! She’d spoken truth to those fool councillors – that their policies were leading Nap into further decline … could he do any less? He drew a steeling breath. ‘They preferred the lies that you chose not to give them.’

One corner of her thin lips twitched. ‘I see. Sunk by my own mouth. You think I should have plied them with lies and flattery as well. You and Amaron.’

‘It is as he has tried to teach you all these years. Statecraft, m’lady.’

Those hard lips drew down in a savage scowl. ‘I refuse to play that game.’

Then you will lose! Cartheron steadied himself with another breath.

‘But … I grant you that I must guard my mouth more closely in the future.’

One small victory, at the least. ‘We must withdraw, m’lady. Sail today to fight tomorrow.’

A sad half-smile drifted across her pale blue features. ‘That old sailors’ saw. Napan to the core, Cartheron. Yes. Exile, then. Though it disgusts me.’

He motioned to the stairs and she nodded, preceding him.

He paused here, at the top of the tower, and his gaze returned to the smoke. Lit from below by the flames, it churned into the night sky. So be it. Exile. A new toss of the Twins’ dice; nothing new to an experienced sea-raider. He turned to face the iron waters of the Strait of Storms and glimpsed there the thick clouds of a gathering namesake.

* * *

Nedurian tossed his line from the end of the Malaz City harbour wharf and sat back once more to let the day pass. Sometimes, when restlessness came over him, he wondered whether he’d been right to walk away from the battles, the long string of command tents and encampments and the challenge of matching another talent in the field. But usually, in the next instant, he remembered the pain, the terror, the fallen comrades, and all the damned loss and waste, and could not regret the decision he had made so long ago.

After these moments of weakness he would recall his new appointment and cast his awareness far out upon the waters of the Strait of Storms, watching for any similar restlessness there deep within those dark frigid waters. Then, come the dusk, he would wind up his line once more and make the long walk back to the city waterfront for a drink and a meal at the Oar and Anchor.

This evening, an old-timer among his fellows sitting on a bench greeted him. ‘Fish don’t like you today, Ned?’

He gestured with his rod back towards the wide black waters. ‘I was lied to! Ain’t no fish out there at all.’

The fellow guffawed. Another considered his pipe and suggested, ‘I think he just plain scared them off.’

Nedurian thoughtfully drew a finger down his broken flattened nose and brushed the ridges of the scars that ran from his temple down to his chin. ‘Now what makes you say that, ol’ Renn?’

‘You do know you have to put a hook on that, don’t ya?’ offered another fellow.

‘One of those things? Hood, a fish stole my last long ago.’

The old-timers chuckled again. ‘See you tonight?’

He ambled on up the wharf. ‘I’ll be there.’

He headed inland, up the slight grade of the waterfront district. Beyond the sun-greyed shake roofs rose the craggy wind-clawed cliffs of the escarpment with the stained granite stones of Mock’s Hold perched above like a crow’s nest.

He’d taken a room in town with an old widow who, out of decades of stubborn habit, still kept a watch for a sailor husband long past returning. At least he thought of her as old, even though he’d already seen more years than her in her grandmother’s time. Years of warfare in which he’d sold his services to petty robber barons, bandit despots, the kings of Purge and Bloor, all the way up to the last dynasty of the Talian hegemony.

But no more. No more fighting and no more battle magery. He now lent his talents to a far more worthy cause.

He paused to set his elbows upon the mortared stone ledge of a bridge over one of the many river channels that cut through the town, built as it was on a boggy marsh, remembering his surprise upon retiring to this back-of-beyond island of Malaz to find talents here that could blast away any of the mightiest practitioners he’d duelled on the continent. All settled, or gathered, for one reason alone. One he’d been ignorant of though living all the while across a relatively narrow band of water. Oh, certainly, he knew all the myths and legends of the Riders, but to him they’d been only stories …

Something tickled his nose then and he raised his head, turning to the waterfront. What was that? Something … new. He cocked his head, cast his awareness outwards. He knew it was there but he couldn’t pin it down. All he could sense was that there’d been a sudden shift in the wind.

He’d have dismissed the passing sensation as a mere shudder, or the distant echo of some far off plucking of the Warrens, but for one small thing. Far above, atop Mock’s Hold, possibly the highest point of the island itself, stood an ancient weathervane hammered and chiselled into the form of a demon. And at that moment of heightened awareness he noticed it too had suddenly shifted to point directly to the east.

A coincidence? He tapped the fishing rod on his shoulder, considering. Best not to jump at every visiting talent who happened to pass through town. Even this misbegotten backwater. He’d wait and see.

Perhaps it would come to nothing.